People who know me have always asked the same question when I was facing adversity in my life: “Laurent, how do you stay so calm?”.

My co-workers would often ask the question when leading the company through difficult moments, when business seemed to collapse with no end in sight, with employees’ livelihoods at stake and massive pressure from top management.

My friends would ask the question when I was going through a complicated divorce, where everything I had built was “taken away from me”.

My children would ask me the question when going through cancer treatment this past year, from the diagnosis to chemotherapy, then radiation and finally three complicated surgeries.

It’s true that feeling calm is an emotion that I cherish. It allows me to take a step back, to get out of the situation. But calm does not mean disengaged. I still care, I am still committed, I am still determined.

Staying calm when facing adversity can be achieved through physiology, extreme ownership and embodying your future-self. But first, let’s look at why you should stay calm when dealing with challenges.

1. What are the benefits of being calm?

Miyamoto Musashi, the famous Japanese samurai-philosopher, wrote in his masterpiece The Book of Five Rings: The Strategy of the Samurai:

“Both in fighting and in everyday life you should be determined though calm.”

We often think of other virtues for warriors: combativeness, toughness, courage and determination. And yet Miyamoto Musashi mentions being calm as one of the highest virtues for the samurai.

There are three main benefits of remaining calm when facing adversity and which probably explain why Miyamoto Musashi valued that virtue for the Japanese swordsmen.

a.     Better judgment:

As I mentioned before, when feeling calm, I extract myself from the situation and see it with more objectivity. I don’t deny the difficulties I am facing, but I don’t make them worse either. I focus my attention on what I can control, and let go of what I cannot, including regretting the past or worrying about the future. Feeling calm keeps you focused on the present moment. From that state, I usually come up with better solutions, and I make better decisions, thus creating better results in my life.

The best example to illustrate this is Warren Buffet, a legendary calm investor in the very noisy and ostentatious world of finance. When he advises to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful”, what he is truly saying is “don’t let fear and greed drive your investing decisions”. Rather, come from a place where you don’t let your emotions drive your decisions, from a place of knowingness where you control the fundamentals of your investing decisions.

b.    Patience and compassion:

When facing adversity, our emotions of fear, anxiety, doubt or anger run high, often because we have a hard time identifying the problem, let alone finding a solution to it. Ignorance is the biggest issue at first.

And yet, we rush to take action, to try to find solutions when we don’t even know what the problem is in the first place. This urge to take action comes from wanting to get rid of our negative emotions. We believe that if we just do something, somehow our negative feelings are going to disappear. Notice that taking action could include over-eating, over-drinking or taking substances. We are reacting to our emotions, which means that we are under their control.

Being calm does not mean that you don’t feel those same negative emotions. You will still feel afraid, you will still feel anxious when waking up in the morning, you will still have doubt or be angry at times. But you don’t react to them. You learn how to be patient, how to be compassionate with yourself, while trying to understand the problem that you are facing. By learning how to be patient and compassionate with yourself, you show the same qualities with others. That’s why I believe my co-workers trust me. They know that I won’t “lash out” at them when they come with bad news, or that I will avoid the problem. They can trust that I will always be there to support them finding a solution.

When I was first diagnosed with stage 3 cancer, my emotions were all over the place. I would wake up in the middle of the night feeling terrible. My mind was racing with all the worst possible scenarios, thinking of my children, my wife, my parents, my friends and my work colleagues. The main emotion I was experiencing was terror. It lasted for several weeks.

By allowing the emotion without reacting to it, by being patient and compassionate with myself, I saw little by little that my feeling was coming from a belief that I was going to die. Which was a completely optional belief. No doctor had told me anything about that outcome. My brain had come to that conclusion just based on the negativity around the word “cancer”. Once I could see the problem with clarity, I could then find a solution to it. I chose to believe something different, which allowed me to completely turn around my experience of cancer.

c.     Confidence and optimism:

Another corollary of being calm when facing adversity, is that you inherently believe in yourself, in your capacity to come up with solutions even if you don’t see them just yet. We are often blocked with fear when we don’t know how to do something or solve a problem. Staying in that fear usually leads to procrastination, avoidance and/or giving into urges. When you believe in your own resourcefulness, rather than obsessing on the missing resources, you often come up with creative solutions to your problems.

You are confident that all problems have a solution, and that life will bring your way what you need, either through insights or by attracting the people who will help you. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have to work, that you don’t need to show up. It means that you fundamentally believe that every “negative” situation comes with silver linings and that with time, they will become evident.

This attitude also allows you to do the “leaps of faith” that life requires from time to time. Sometimes you won’t have all the insights to make a decision. Sometimes you won’t see clearly all the consequences of your actions. Yet, from a place of calmness, believing in yourself, in your ability to figure things out, and remaining optimistic on the outcome, you make the decision anyway.

Now that we’ve seen the benefits of being calm when facing adversity, the question is “how do you do it?”

2. How to remain calm when facing adversity?

a.     Physiology:

There is a lot of advice on the internet on how to calm down by using your breath. It definitely works as a way to temporarily calm down. I highly recommend it, if you’re in the grip of an intense emotion such as anxiety or fear. But it is very difficult to keep your attention constantly focused on your breath. It’s a quick fix but difficult to maintain in the long run.

In fact, the best advice I can give to stay calm in difficult moments is to take care of yourself before you need it. Just like the well-trained crew will weather a storm much more easily than the one trying to figure out what to do in the middle of it. Eating a balanced diet, sleeping well and exercising regularly will put you in a mental state that will allow you to gain perspective much quicker.

Continue taking care of yourself even in the midst of your difficulties. When I was younger, I often overlooked this myself, thinking that my problems were more important than taking the time to look after my body. It was always a big mistake and came to bite me at one moment or another, especially when the adversity lasted for months.

If you haven’t been taking care of yourself until now, it is never too late. Start now. Learn how to eat a healthier diet. Exercise regularly. Get a good night’s sleep. Our thoughts are not generated out of thin air. They emanate from a biological process in our brains. We underestimate that the quality of our thinking also comes from the quality of our bodies. 

This will require some discipline. When in stress, we tend to do the exact opposite. We want to drink that glass of wine, smoke that cigarette or watch Netflix until 2 am. These are crutches to try to avoid our negative emotions. You will only end up the next day with brain fog, indulging or reacting to your negative emotions, with no solution in sight to your problem.

b.    Extreme ownership:

“Extreme Ownership is a mind-set of not making excuses and not blaming anyone or anything else when problems occur.” – Jocko Willink, Leadership Strategy and Tactics

Extreme ownership allows you to take full responsibility of what is occurring in your life. By owning it, you are telling your brain that it is in your power to find a solution to the problem. There is nothing more disempowering than to blame someone else or circumstances for your situation. You have no other solution than to try to control others or the world, and we know how successful we can be at that. Close to zero.

There are two levels of extreme ownership. First, you have to own your results in your life. Whatever your situation in life, you are there because you’ve made some decisions in your past. Had you made different choices, taken different actions, you would have created a different result for yourself. At times, this can be difficult to accept. Life can throw you some weird curve balls. But by taking extreme ownership, you can start asking yourself the right questions: 

• What do I need to do differently?
• What can I learn from this in order to course-correct?
• What did I do in the past that got me here?

If you believe it’s only because of chance or bad luck, you will not open up to your inner wisdom. For example, I took full ownership of my cancer. You might think that I am too harsh. But thinking otherwise, believing that it was just bad luck, only puts me in a position where I can’t do anything about it. Whereas taking ownership allows me to revisit how I prioritize my health in my life. I realized that, having never been sick before, I took my health for granted. Taking ownership of my situation allowed me to revisit this. I now make different choices, take different actions, which ultimately will create different results. For example, I exercise four to five times per week, prioritizing these moments on my calendar over anything else, unlike before. I very rarely drink alcohol anymore, even in social settings, when I used to be a regular “social drinker”. I do a regular health checkup, when before I wouldn’t see a doctor for years.

The second level of extreme ownership is owning everything you feel. Whatever you are feeling, it has nothing to do with your current circumstances or what others say or do. Once you take ownership of your emotions, then you can start having some authority over them and change how you feel. Coming back to my personal example of feeling terror when I was diagnosed with cancer, my feeling had nothing to do with what the doctor said. It even had nothing to do with cancer itself. The tumor was probably developing for months or years in my body and I wasn’t feeling anything. No, my feeling came from my belief that I was going to die. It was only by taking full ownership of my emotion, without trying to push it away, resisting it or reacting to it, that I could see with clarity what I was creating for myself. I then decided to believe, first that “I am going to live”, and then that “my cancer is a blessing in disguise”. Which leads me to tell others that this has been one of the best moments in my life, despite all the pain and discomfort due to the treatment. I couldn’t stop counting my blessings.

c.     Embodying your Future-self

Finally, one of the most powerful techniques to feel calm when facing adversity is to come from a place where you have already overcome your problems. This can only be done once you care for your body and take ownership for your results and emotions. 

Visualize yourself having overcome the adversity that you are currently facing. What are you feeling? What are you thinking? Who have you become at the end of this process? Once you are there in your imagination, and feeling those emotions in your body, what advice can your future-self give to your present-self?

Feelings of confidence and certainty will arise powerfully in your body. You come up with solutions that you didn’t even know existed. In that stillness, you will find the answers to anything you are dealing with in your life.

For me, the question isn’t so much “how do you stay so calm in the face of adversity?” but rather “why?”. I stay calm, because I know, in the deepest core of my Self, that the solutions to my “problems” are not outside of me.

Being calm is the best way to access our inner wisdom, that collective intelligence that has been built for hundreds of thousands of years. Our brain is the latest and best version of it. We have to learn how to use it, rather than our brain using us.

My mom called me via FaceTime once I was out of the Intensive Care Unit and in the hospital room. 

I was lying on my bed, the bed tilted to a 45-degree angle. I answered the phone and saw my Mom’s face, half relieved to see me, half frowning her brows in an expression of worry.

Mom: “How are you doing Laurent? We were so worried. It’s not easy for us as we live so far away. What happened exactly?”

Me: “I’m ok mom. You don’t need to worry anymore. Things are ok now. I will soon be out of the hospital.”

Mom: “But what happened? This story is unbelievable. I haven’t been sleeping in the past 2 nights. Your father and I are super worried. Why didn’t the surgeons see what was going on earlier? Since we’ve learned that you had to urgently go back to the operating room, I’ve been so worried. You can’t imagine how tired I am now.”

Her rambling goes on for about 3 minutes. She tells everything she’s been imagining these past three days. I stay silent.

Me: “Mom, I’m ok. I’m here now.”

Mom: “I’m so happy to see you. I wish I could be there with you. You know how much I love you.”

Mom: “But…”

And there goes again my Mom’s brain. Creating her own worry.

With love,

Laurent

A funny thing about being in a vulnerable state is that you revisit events from your past and shed a new light on it.

One of them had a tremendous impact on me. It happened when I was 6 years old.

I was living in Spain at the time, in the suburbs of Madrid. Our house was part a small complex of 8 houses sharing a common pool. You would access the pool through the backyard.

In wintertime, the pool was never emptied. The water would become dirty brown. Logs or wooden boards would be floating on the water.

One day, my parents were receiving friends over at home. They had boys who were slightly older than I and my brother who was 4 years old.

I wanted to take the boys to the pool to show them around. And play with the wooden planks floating on the water. My parents said ok but that I had to watch out that my little brother didn’t follow us to the pool.

A few moments later, we were all around the pool, including my little brother who wanted to come and play with us.

My little brother pushed a floating wooden board and moved too far from the edge of the pool. He tipped over and fell into the pool.

I ran towards the edge where he was last seen. I could see my brother all dressed up in his winter clothes wanting to reach towards the surface with his hand. His mouth was open like he wanted to scream. I saw that he was sinking, probably due to the weight of his wet clothes.

In a split second, I fell onto my knees and dove my arm into the water. I grabbed his hand before it was too late and pulled him out of the water.

Startled, my brother ran home crying. I remember seeing him running home. I thought to myself that I had done something terrible.

I don’t quite remember what happened after, but it mustn’t have been fun. My parents must have punished me for not having kept my brother away from the pool. The fact that I don’t remember is probably a sign of some form of trauma. All I know is that from my thought “I did something terrible”, I jumped to thinking “I’m a terrible person”.

I was 6 years old. Now I’m 47.

Looking at the story again, I can see how my interpretation of the events was unreasonable.

My parents should never have put on me the responsibility to watch over my brother. I was 6 years old.

I didn’t do anything wrong. Looking at the events now, I am not a terrible person.

In fact, I am a hero. I showed tremendous courage to act quickly and pull my brother out of the water.

And in the light of this new belief, I started looking at so many other events in my life. In the face of tremendous adversity, I have always showed courage and resilience to overcome them.

I reached over to my phone next to my hospital bed and twitted:

I AM THE HERO OF MY LIFE.

With love,

Laurent

I mentioned in my previous posts (here and here) how my last surgery did not go as expected.

During the entire experience, I was tired. I was in pain.

The nurses were trying to put peripheral venous catheters on my arms. Several times in fact as they were falling off. I guess my internal bleeding was contracting my veins.

It was hard for the nurses to find my veins. Each peripheral required at least 2 or 3 attempts. 2 or 3 times where you feel the pinch of the needle going under your skin. It was very uncomfortable.

I could have lost it. I could have gotten angry and bark at them to do a better job.

I saw everyone scrambling around me. I saw how things were not going as expected. I heard the number each time they measured my blood pressure or my temperature.

I could have started yelling for help. I could have started panicking.

I saw my surgeon. He reassured me that everything would be fine. Before going to the Operation Room, he made me sign a legal paper. I was unable to read, much less understand, at this point.

I could have snapped at him. I could have challenged his skills for being in this situation. I could have refused to sign the document and start a legal argument.

All the “coulds” I mentioned before were coming from thoughts my primitive brain was thinking. The superior part of my brain made sure those thoughts passed through with no reaction.

I deliberately chose to think that everyone was here for me. That the entire medical team had one sole purpose: my well-being.

I even chose to think that I was part of the team. My role was to watch my brain. Avoid it to go into fight/flight mode. And give the most accurate feedback when someone asked how I was feeling.

You are not your brain. You are the watcher.

The brain is just a tool. Make sure you run it and that it doesn’t run you.

With love,

Laurent

I woke up from my surgery on Saturday around 11 am or noon. My wife was there at my bedside.

My ileostomy closure surgery was scheduled at 7 am that morning. The surgeon had told my wife that everything had gone well. Having little body fat made things easier for surgeons apparently.

I was now being monitored in the Intensive Care Unit. Blood pressure was low (in the 80s) but stable. Pain was tolerable as I was still under the effects of the anesthesia.

During the course of the day, nurses and doctors passed by very regularly. Blood pressure was still low and stable. No fever.

A nurse asked me if I could stand up. I managed to do it 6 weeks ago after my first surgery. I thought to myself that I would be able to do it again.

I remember going slowly to sit on the side of my bed, my legs touching the floor. The next thing I see are 6 or 7 faces scrambling around me, asking me if I’m ok and how am I feeling, while playing with my IVs, my blood pressure and measuring my temperature.

I couldn’t understand why all these people were around me. I said “Yes, of course, I’m ok”, irritated that they question what I had answered a few moments ago. It took me a few more seconds to understand that I was lying on my bed now. I had fainted. The interruption of my stream of consciousness for a few seconds is one of the weirdest experiences.

They put me back to bed, still under constant observation. My blood pressure was still low. I was not feeling well, like if I was bloated.

I raised my bed to sit up in a straighter position. That feeling rose up in my chest and made me feel nauseous. I called the nurse telling her I was not feeling well.

She rushed and measured my blood pressure. 72. She called the doctor who was on guard. They checked my belly. Nothing visible from the outside. I had some fever now 38.5. Blood pressure dropped again to 53.

The doctor decided to give me a blood transfusion and told me that I would need surgery again. They called my surgeon back to the hospital.

Thanks to the transfusion my blood pressure increased back to the 80s. My surgeon passed by and reassured me.

At midnight I entered the operation room. I woke up at 3 am on Sunday. My blood pressure was normal. I had no more fever.

My body was beaten up, but I was alright. My life was ahead of me.

With love,

Laurent

I mentioned in a previous post that I was going to have surgery again. And that I was feeling grateful and excited, feelings that I could create by living from my future self.

Having said that, I still had some expectations on how the surgery was going to go and on the outcome of that surgery.

I will give more detail of what happened in my next post. All I can say is that it did not meet my expectations. At all!

Expectations, by the way, of my own creation. I’ve never experienced before a ileostomy closure surgery. But I still had created expectations on how the surgery should go, and how I should feel after the surgery.

In the moment, I felt disappointed. Even sometimes angry.

I could continue to argue on “what should have been”. But it’s a waste of energy and only puts me in a negative place emotionally.

Here lies the secret: the sooner you let go of your expectations, the faster you can get to a place where you embrace reality as it is. And start feeling emotions that are much more useful.

I let go of my expectations on my surgery. I focused my energy on thinking thoughts from my future self. And I know what I’m experiencing now, however painful, will soon be behind me.

With love,

Laurent

Last week, I recorded my first ever podcast. I was being interviewed. I shared my learnings from my experience at L’Oreal. And my new coaching activity helping executives going through cancer.

It was an interesting experience. But not very comfortable. I still have progress to make if I want to start doing my own podcasts.

What surprised me though was all the feedback I got. People were reaching out to thank me for my testimonial.

Creating value is putting yourself out there. It’s offering to the world your unique perspective. Even if you consider it B- work, you have the potential to impact someone’s life. One unique perspective, one idea that you articulate in a certain way, and someone can see their life changed forever.

Going through cancer is a story of overcoming fear, anxiety and pain. It’s a story of resilience. It’s a story of love. And it can be a story of sadness and loss. In all cases, it’s a story worth sharing and your take on it is very unique.

Yes, it’s more comfortable to be listening to other people’s podcasts. It’s easier to consume information rather than to create it. And you don’t put yourself at risk of being criticized.

But only creating value can impact the world. You’ve been created to offer to the world your unique perspective. Find a way to share it.

With love,

Laurent

I read James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. I highly recommend it.

He shows how tiny habits practiced every day can have a tremendous impact on your results.

But there’s another learning from the book that I love. Whatever you have in your current life is a lagging indicator of your past habits.

Your wealth is a lagging indicator of your past financial habits. Your weight is a lagging indicator of your eating habits. Your knowledge is a lagging indicator of your learning habits. The quality of your relationships is a lagging indicator of who you were spending time with. Your fitness is a lagging indicator of your exercise habits.

As he summarizes “you get what you repeat”.

I look at myself now. I’ve stopped drinking alcohol. I’ve reviewed my eating protocol. I workout 5 times per week. I’ve reviewed my financial habits. I work every day on my coaching practice. I learn every day. I’m interacting with new people.

I could look at my current results and regret my past habits. There’s no upside to that. I can’t change my past.

Instead, I focus at what I’m doing daily. And I am excited about my future self.

With love,

Laurent

Tomorrow I’m going back to the hospital for surgery. It will be my last surgery and then will start a long phase of recovery and adaptation to the reality of my new body.

I am excited and grateful.

I know I will have pain. I know that it won’t be easy. I know that I will have moments of doubt and discouragement.

But I also know that I will get over it, even if it takes months or years.

In my mind, I’m already there. I am already my future self. It’s only a question of time for reality to catchup. When you’re 100% certain of the outcome, being patient is not a problem.

With love,

Laurent

I woke up after 5 hours being under anesthesia. I was lying on a bed in a corner of the intensive care unit. Tubes plugged to my hands through intravenous catheter. Tubes in several parts of my abdomen all hooked to devices and pouches with fluids. Tubes in my nose delivering oxygen. 

My wife was there, happy to see me wake up and smiling. I felt peaceful, still under the effects of the anesthesia. My parents showed up a few minutes later. I could see a huge relief in their eyes. They had always tried to preserve me from their fears. I could see in that moment what they had been living in the past 9 months.

My wife told me the surgeon was very happy with the surgery. It had gone smoothly, and they finished faster than they had planned for. He mentioned that I would have one last surgery in 6 weeks, but that my journey with cancer was over.

My wife and my parents had to leave the intensive care unit. I stayed there in silence, reflecting on the past 9 months. I suddenly shed gentle tears. Enjoying that moment where I was admiring myself for going through my journey.

And then it hit me. When was the last time I admired myself? It must have been decades ago.

I’m not talking about arrogance, meaning thinking that I am better than everyone else. It was true, sincere admiration for the incredible human being that I am. Why didn’t I admire myself more often? Wasn’t I worth admiration?

Lesson of that day: remember to admire yourself often. You are worth all your admiration.

With love,

Laurent